LogMeIn has announced that it will extend the availability of its previously announced offer of free Emergency Remote Work Kits until June for critical service organizations, including schools, health care providers, municipalities, and non-profits. The kits, which include complimentary software for video conferencing, virtual events, remote access to devices and applications, as well as remote IT support, feature products like GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC, LogMeIn Pro and RescueAssist. These kits were first introduced in response to the sudden need for businesses, organizations and entire communities to shelter-in-place and adopt widespread remote working, education and service. Since LogMeIn began offering these in early March, thousands of the kits have been deployed across the globe, including school districts, major cities and towns, key hospitals and large and small non-profits.
“As businesses and communities adjust to this new norm of work, many never expected to be fully-remote and were ill-prepared for such a scenario. From the start, our employees and teams have been looking for ways to help where they can, and getting our remote work tools into the hands of those that needed them most was an obvious way to assist our communities, especially those on the front lines of this crisis,” said Bill Wagner, CEO of LogMeIn. “The recipients have continued to be an inspiration to our team, and we’re honored to play even a small part in their efforts to help citizens, students, medical staff and the public, at large overcome the disruption caused by COVID-19.”
In recent weeks, the remote work trend has reached extreme acceleration levels, as organizations around the globe have gone from seeing remote work as something that might be done occasionally, if at all, to fully remote organizations by necessity. While LogMeIn has long supported remote work and has seen an increase in adoption of remote working in recent years, the COVID-19 related shifts have caused a significant jump in usage of the company’s offerings, not just in the now ubiquitous video conferencing, but also in areas like remote access, remote IT support and even cloud telephony.
Local and Regional Municipalities: These include major US cities, communities in some of the hardest hit areas including the States of California and Washington as well as national associations of municipalities in Italy, Australia and other domestic and international regions. These organizations are using GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar along with other LogMeIn products to stay connected to staff and their constituents to disseminate critical information during this time of crisis.
Healthcare: Hospitals and healthcare facilities around the globe are using GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar to keep staff virtually connected with each other and patients in ways that help coordinate actions and treatment without putting healthcare providers and patients in additional unnecessary risk.
Non-profit: Non-profit organizations from those helping people hit especially hard during a time of isolation such as those with mental or physical disabilities, to those that connect business communities with offers of help and support have turned to remote working tools to keep up a steady level of business continuity that allows them to continue to help those that need it most.
“LogMeIn has been a terrific partner during our Pandemic response efforts. Their GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and RescueAssist tools have been invaluable to the Washington State Department of Health as we respond to this Public Health emergency. In addition to our regular subscriptions, we have taken advantage of their Emergency Remote Work Kit and it has helped us to quickly extend our reach with these tools,” said Callie Goldsby, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Washington State Department of Health.
Goldsby added, “Specifically GoToMeeting has allowed our teams to work remotely and still be virtually face to face in order to meet and collaborate to get their critical work done, GoToWebinar has allowed us to conduct large meetings, presenting to hundreds of local health officials to keep them apprised with the COVID-19 response. And finally, RescueAssist has been instrumental in aiding our IT ServiceDesk to provide remote support to our agency employees who need immediate assistance to get their software or laptop working properly without having to be physically present. Without these tools it would be extremely difficult to operate in a remote way. We appreciate all of the support we have received from our LogMeIn partners.”
LogMeIn announced the Emergency Remote Work Kit initiative in early March as part of the company’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of helping customers and critical service providers accelerate efforts to keep their employees, students and citizens safe by shifting to remote work. These free Emergency Remote Work Kits include solutions for meetings and video conferencing, webinars and virtual events, IT support and management of remote employee devices and apps, remote access to devices in multiple locations, and with the addition of GoToConnect, a full UCC platform for K-12 schools. These kits will be available at no cost for three months. Since announcing their availability, LogMeIn has given away millions of dollars’ worth of software as part of this initiative, totaling thousands of kits and serving more than one million individual new users around the Globe.
In addition to the Emergency Remote Work Kits, LogMeIn has also started a resource center with tips and best practices on how to master the shift to remote working for employees, managers and IT teams.